A Weaver Christmas Gift. Allison Leigh

      “Because if I want to have a baby, all this has to change.” Her tone—superior and vaguely snooty—pulled his attention back to her face. She was waving her hand toward the bed. Toward him.

      The pink robe was thin. It clung lovingly to her curves as she moved around the room, snatching up their strewn articles of clothing.

      Again, he focused with an effort and bunched the blanket around his hips as he sat up. This particular turn of the conversation made sprawling there naked as a jaybird seem ill-advised. “Change,” he repeated warily.

      She made that sound again and tossed him his jeans. She hadn’t found his boxers yet, but he didn’t care. He got off the bed and pulled on the jeans anyway. “Obviously, I can’t proceed with my plan while we’re—” she waved her hand again “—whatever we are.”

      “Friends with benefits,” he hazarded. It was a safer definition than some he could have offered.

      She snorted softly. “I think friends is overstating.”

      He grimaced, not liking the fact that her words bit any more than he liked the way the night had taken such an abrupt turn south. “We’re friends,” he grumbled. Maybe it was an exaggeration, but he was pretty sure it wasn’t an outright lie.

      Her eyebrows rose as if she didn’t believe the claim any more than he did. She’d pulled on the pair of black horn-rimmed glasses that she rarely wore when she was working at Colbys, the bar and grill she’d bought five years ago. The lenses made her eyes look unnaturally large.

      The first time he’d seen her wearing them, he’d decided the bookish glasses made her look even sexier.

      Oddly approachable.

      Times like this, he wished he’d never seen her in them, considering they’d ended up in bed together almost immediately after.

      “Please,” she drawled. “In what way are we friends? There’s nothing on which we ever agree.”

      Even over that point, he had to differ. “You pour a decent beer. And you came to your senses finally and stopped charging to use the pool tables.”

      “High praise. We don’t have a friendship. We have a...a sexship.” She didn’t look at him as she tossed him his T-shirt. It still hit him square in the chest. “I want to have a baby,” she said again. “But I have no desire to be a single mother.” She bent over again and the lapels of her robe gaped, giving him an eyeful of creamy skin. “Call me old-fashioned, but I intend to be married first.” She straightened and dropped his socks on the corner of the bed in front of him.

      Here’s your hat; what’s your hurry?

      “And then stay that way,” she added flatly. “My mom never married my dad. After she kicked him out, she struggled every single day raising my sister and me. Trust me. I am not doing that. I want a husband.”

      His head felt oddly light. He sat on the bed and shoved his feet into the socks. “You told me you’d had one of those and couldn’t imagine wanting another.”

      “I don’t want another husband like Gage,” she said, as if Casey was missing the point. “He was a complete workaholic.” She gave Casey a pointed look, evidently accusing him of fitting the description, too. “I want someone who will put me first.”

      “Someone who’ll let you run the show, you mean,” he muttered. One thing he’d learned about Janie Cohen was that she liked to think she was always in the driver’s seat.

      She gave him one of her snippy smiles. “At least I have a plan.”

      He scratched his chin. He’d forgotten to shave before coming to see her. He usually tried to remember to, because her fair skin was so easily marred by his whiskers. But he’d had a long day and hadn’t thought beyond seeing her as soon as possible. “Am I supposed to take some hint there that you think I don’t?”

      “I’m not talking about you.”

      Maybe he’d spent too many hours studying computer feeds, because following her thought process was giving him a headache. “And the plan is to get a husband so you can get knocked up?”

      “I’m a thirty-two-year-old woman,” she said. “Knocked up is for teenagers who don’t know better.”

      “Like your mom.”

      She made a face and ignored that. “Obviously, I’m not getting any younger. So I need to get started.” She waved him out of the way and smartly flipped the sheets into some semblance of order.

      He had the feeling he was being flipped away just as easily as the wrinkles in the fabric.

      “Just like that.” He snapped his fingers in her face. “What are you going to do? Order yourself up some husband out of Mail-Order Husbands Weekly?”

      She hesitated as if she was actually giving the idea some thought.

      “I was kidding,” he said hastily.

      “There are mail-order brides,” she said. “Guess there are probably mail-order husbands. But no.” She fluffed the pillows, put them back at the head of the bed and turned to face him, her hands propped on her narrow hips. She looked up at him through her glasses with her vaguely buggy brown eyes.

      And he was damned if he didn’t want to tumble her right back onto that bed and mess up the sheets all over again, even if she was annoying as hell.

      “I intend to find a husband right here in Weaver.”

      He barked out a laugh before he could stop himself.

      “You think it’s funny?” Her voice went silky but her eyes were as chilly as a Weaver winter. “You think I’m incapable of finding a man who might want to put a ring on it?”

      “I think the pickings around Weaver are gonna be a tad slim for a woman like you,” he answered, trying unsuccessfully to curtail his untimely amusement. Their small Wyoming town wasn’t exactly a mecca of single, eligible adults. Despite the consumer electronics company he ostensibly worked for, Cee-Vid, the town was first and foremost a ranching community. Always had been. Always would be. And Jane—for all of her talents—didn’t strike him as a typical rancher’s wife.

      A niggle of guilt pricked his mind over that. Among his own relatives, he could count a passel of ranchers. None of their wives were particularly “typical” either. There were doctors, accountants, business owners...

      Jane had propped her hand on her hip and was staring down her nose at him. Considering she was about a foot shorter, it was a feat he might have admired under other circumstances.

      “A woman like me,” she repeated. Her eyebrow arched. “Want to explain that one, Clay?”

      “Untie the knots in your little white panties, sport,” he returned. “I just meant you’re a tad...classy...for some of the guys around here.”

      She didn’t look particularly soothed. “I run a bar where the dress code just means wiping the manure off your cowboy boots before you come in,” she snapped. “How on God’s green earth does that make me classy?”

      Stubborn. Headstrong. A straight shooter who didn’t suffer fools. He kept the descriptors to himself. At one time or another—often all at once—they fit the woman standing in front of him. She was also beautiful as hell, uncommonly unpretentious and a challenge to his senses as well as his brain.

      He dragged his T-shirt on over his head and pretended not to notice the way her gaze dropped, just for a second, to run hungrily over his abdomen before he yanked the white cotton over it.

      Sex.

      That was what the two of them were good at.

      Exceedingly good at, they’d discovered. And, he’d thought, to their mutual satisfaction and content.

      Now she wanted